Category Archives: SQL Server

Almost every SQL Server database contains “spatial” data. That information might not use the dedicated geography or geometry spatial datatypes but, more likely, could be a table of customer addresses, the name of a city of region for which a … Continue reading →

This is one of those things that I can’t imagine anybody would ever really want to do but, seeing as I haven’t posted anything for a while, I thought I’d write about it just in case it’s of use to … Continue reading →

Nearest neighbour queries (or, for my international readers, nearest-neighbor queries), are a pretty common query pattern used in location-based applications and spatial analysis:- given a set of known locations of restaurants, customers, stations etc., “What/where is the nearest X to … Continue reading →

I can’t think of any practical purpose for this code, but here’s a recursive SQLCLR procedure to draw a Sierpinski triangle fractal (or, at least, an approximation of one to a given level of detail) in SQL Server just because … Continue reading →

The Reduce() method simplifies geography or geometry instances by removing vertices. Depending on the situation, this can sometimes cause a Polygon instance to collapse in on itself, degenerating into a LineString, or even a single Point. For example, in the … Continue reading →

So I’ve been trying to think of some examples that make use of the Garmin POI data from my last post. Seeing as POI data naturally lends itself to nearest-neighbour queries, I thought I’d write a little about those. The … Continue reading →